


The Witch's Familiar AU

by K_Ernst



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: AU The Witch's Familiar, Action/Adventure, Angst, Canon implied romantic friendship, Episode: s09e02 The Witch's Familiar, Friendship, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-02
Updated: 2019-05-02
Packaged: 2020-02-16 05:33:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,784
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18685135
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/K_Ernst/pseuds/K_Ernst
Summary: An AU of The Witch’s Familiar: The Doctor is facing down the Dalek that Missy told him killed Clara.  But before he discovers the truth, he is forced to flee from the panicked Dalek hoard.





	The Witch's Familiar AU

**Author's Note:**

> Note some dialogue is taken directly from the episode.

She was alive!  She was alive!  He had been clinging to that feeble hope, and now his blood sang with it.  If Missy’s death had been faked, then so had Clara’s.  He pelted down the corridor, the city rumbling and heaving around him.  He needed to find her and get them out quickly.  A great tremor threw him against the wall.  Before his eyes, a dark mass began to ooze from a vent in the wall.  They were coming.

He came to an intersection and stopped short, eyes widening in fear.  He had nearly run right into a Dalek, and it had already seen him.  “Doctor!” it growled.

As it approached, he took a cautious step back.  He was pinned in the open, entirely defenseless.  Well, not entirely.  _You’re the Doctor,_ he thought.  _You argue reason with the enemy until a better plan comes to you._   Of course, it had seldom worked on a Dalek.  He lifted a hand placatingly.  “This city is about to be sucked into the ground.  Your own sewer is about to consume you.”

Still it rolled nearer.  He was running out of time.

“There’s no way you can win, there is nothing you can do.  So just tell me, where is Clara Oswald?”

“I am a Dalek,” it answered unhelpfully.

 “Yes, you’re a Dalek, where is Clara?”

“I am a Dalek.”

“Yes, I know that you’re a Dalek,” he replied, frustration overcoming his fear.  The Dalek hadn’t tried to kill him yet, and he needed to find Clara and get them out _now._ “Where is Clara Oswald?” 

It faced him now, mere feet away.  “I am a Dalek.  I am a Dalek,” it repeated incessantly.

“Doctor, stop!” Missy caught up to him, raising an exterminator at the Dalek.  “It’s you, isn’t it?  I mean, no offense, you all look alike, but it is you?”

The Dalek turned its attention towards her.  “Affirmative.”  It backed away from the exterminator in her hands.

“Clara’s dead, Doctor,” Missy said tightly. 

_What?_ His eyes widened in stunned horror. 

“This is the one that killed her,” she announced coldly.

“Do not listen to her.  I am a Dalek.  I am a Dalek.”  The Dalek rolled back and forth in agitation.

“I got her out of the city, but this one caught us and shot her down.”

He didn’t want to believe her, couldn’t believe her.  For once, he wanted so badly for her to be lying to him.  Clara was alive.  He had just come back to life with that regained hope.  She was alive and he was going to save her.

“There was nothing I could do, I’m afraid.  She ran, she screamed.  I’m so glad you didn’t have to see that.”

He could see it, could see it happening, hear her scream, could see her falling.  His Clara, dead, murdered.

“I am a Dalek!  I am a Dalek!” the Dalek’s growling cry echoed through him.

“This one’s a mad one isn’t it?” Missy scoffed.  “I mean it’s almost like it’s proud.”

“I am a Dalek!  I am a Dalek!”

Breathing hard, he turned his dark fury towards it.  Missy pressed the exterminator into his hand.  “Kill it Doctor.”  He shouldn’t listen to her.  Murdering in vengeance—this wasn’t him, wasn’t what Clara would want of him.  But Missy’s encouragement to kill was answered by the howling loss raging through him. 

“Do not kill me! Do not kill me!” the Dalek pleaded.

“Is Clara dead?” the Doctor bellowed, leveling the exterminator at it. 

“I am a Dalek!  I am alive!”

_And Clara is not._   The implied cruel taunt banked the Doctor’s agonized fury.

“I am your enemy!  Your enemy!” it insisted.

The Doctor braced himself to fire on Clara’s murderer.  Too late, he sensed more Daleks coming.  They rounded the corner beyond his enemy, already raging and firing.  The Murderer spun and fired back at them, giving him the second he needed to dive down the other corridor at a run.  Missy fled in the other direction.  The panicked Daleks swarmed everywhere, and he found himself forced to hide, pressing himself into shadows and corners at every turn. 

The bloody Murderer Dalek was following him.  It still hadn’t shot him, and he wasn’t done thinking it through, wasn’t ready to spare Clara’s murderer or kill it in cold blood when their stand-off was interrupted.  So he focused his attention on the Daleks that _were_ trying to kill him, peripherally aware that his shadow was still shooting back at the others.  _Why?_   He didn’t have time to find out.

He skidded around a corner and came up short at a cross-corridor.  Daleks advanced on him from two directions, and he barely had time to fire at one group before the other was shooting at him, screeching “Exterminate!” in an unholy chorus. 

He dodged and dropped, four of their shots searing the air around him, and flung himself through an open doorway.  His hearts seized suddenly and he hit the floor hard on his side, his shoulder and face striking the concrete.  He tried to scream with the burning agony of the shot that had just taken him in the back, right between his hearts.  His mouth hung open soundlessly, his silent scream nothing more than a tiny rush of air.  He heaved, arching from the floor, but couldn’t get his muscles to unlock enough to draw breath.  Blackness danced across his vision and the Daleks’ screeching faded in and out.  _Do not black out, do not black out,_ he ordered himself sternly.   _If you black out now, you’re dead_.  He rolled to his back, tried to prepare to defend himself.

With an enraged scream, the Murderer Dalek was firing wildly in the corridor, destroying the advancing group. 

Flat on his back, the Doctor craned his neck forward to see it coming through the doorway.  He aimed the Dalek exterminator in shaking hands.  The Murderer Dalek rolling towards him blurred and wavered in his vision.  “Doctor!  Doctor! Doctor!” it grated at him, its whining pitch growing higher and higher with every repetition.

He still couldn’t breathe.  The weapon slipped from his weakening hands.  One of his arms fell across his body, the other at his side.  Paralyzed, he watched from glassy eyes as the Dalek loomed over him.  Its eyestalk glared into his face as it extended its weaponized arm towards him.  “Doctor!  Doctor!  Doctor!” it screeched. 

Fear spiked through him.  He was already in agony, dying.  What more was it going to do to him? 

The Dalek still refused to shoot him.  Its arm rested heavily on his chest.  He struggled to shift away, but he couldn’t move.  The Dalek’s arm crackled with electricity, and it shocked him, hard, impossibly increasing the burning pain in his chest.  Rare tears leaked from his eyes, ran down the sides of his face as he lay helplessly.  It electrocuted him again and again, his body jerking with each blow. 

Then something inside his chest kicked wildly back.  For the first time he was able to gasp a small breath.  One of his hearts had restarted!  He shoved himself up on one elbow, gasping, the other arm flailing clumsily.  His hand closed around the Dalek’s arm.  He froze, heaving for breath, fighting for his life.  He followed the arm down to his chest, where it rested exactly over his right heart.  As he stared back up into the glowing, waiting eye of his faceless enemy, he realized the inconceivable. 

It had done that on purpose!  Oh bloody hell, it was trying to save his life!   _Why?_   He couldn’t think. He remained frozen, warring with his terror and the knowledge that he wouldn’t make it far or even last much longer with only one heart working.  He didn’t even have the breath to speak, let alone run.  His one beating heart raced erratically.  He had no choice: die, or entrust himself to his enemy’s mercy.  After long desperate seconds, he relented.  He released the Dalek, let the arm beneath him give out.  Wide-eyed with terror, incredulous at himself, he nodded once.  

It placed its arm on the other side of his chest and shocked him again.  This time he had breath in his lungs to let out a hoarse yell at the painful jolt of electricity.  He shook his head, clenching his jaw, and it shocked him again.  It only took two tries this time before he felt his second heart quiver and thump, and it took off in a thrumming beat. 

“Ooh, yes!” he roared, bolting upright.  Everything came back into focus and his brain kicked in again.  He leapt to his feet and promptly crashed back to his hands and knees.  Clearly the shot had weakened him beyond the shock to his hearts.  As he gathered his strength to try again, his reignited mind raced over the question of the Dalek beside him.  Why hadn’t it killed him?  It had antagonized him at first, but then defended him and saved his life.  _Why_?

He began to push himself up again, and froze when he heard the Dalek speak.  “Doctor,” it crooned softly.  “Doctor, Doctor.”  A cold wave of dread washed over him.  He had never heard a Dalek make that sound.  That gentle sound.  _No._   His mind was racing to a conclusion he couldn’t bear.  _No._   The Dalek crowded up against him, slid its eyestalk under his arm, tried to lift him to his feet.  _No._ A cold fist clenched in his gut. 

“Where,” he desperately echoed his first question to the Dalek.  “Where is Clara Oswald?”

“I am a Dalek,” it said in that same gentle voice.  “I am a Dalek.”  _No._   But he knew with a certainty he couldn’t deny.  The Dalek wasn’t ignoring his question; it was answering him. 

“No,” he moaned in horror.  He rested his hands gently on either side of the Dalek’s head casing.  “No, not my Clara, no, no, no,” he cried.

For a moment he was back in that terrible Dalek asylum.  _That brave, impossible girl in Clara’s likeness who had saved his life.  He had promised to save her, had fought his way triumphantly to her side. His moment of joyous victory had crumbled to ashes in his hands when he beheld before him not the brave little human, but the Dalek she had become, driven mad, insisting it was still human, and pleading with him to save her.  He couldn’t._

“What have they done to you?” he whispered brokenly.  “Oh, Clara,” he whispered, voice cracking.  He sobbed once, softly.  “My Clara.”

“Doctor,” it drawled dejectedly, pressing its eye to his shoulder.

That very human gesture of seeking comfort awoke something in the Doctor, something fiercely protective and certain.  “Come on.  We’re getting out of here, time to go,” he ordered hoarsely.  He pulled himself upright, leaning heavily on the Dalek as they moved forward.  The city shook beneath them, and he would have fallen if not for her careful support. 

The ranks of the Daleks had thinned.  Scattered throughout the corridors they found many corrupted and dying Daleks, destroyed by the vengeance of their own kind.  He shot one of the piteous sewer Daleks when it tried to approach her casing.  She cleared their path of any other attackers, and they made it to the bay where the Tardis waited.  They entered cautiously, but found the room eerily silent, populated by nothing but dead and leaking Dalek casings.

He called the TARDIS back solemnly, and she materialized protectively around them.  Immediately he threw the switch to take them out of the city.  The TARDIS responded, but she sent up a cacophony of warning bells and emergency lights, shaking madly in transit.  The old girl was not at all happy to have a Dalek invading her sanctum. 

 “I am your enemy.  Exterminate, exterminate,” the Dalek whined, but it fired no shots. 

“No,” The Doctor said gently.  “No, you are not.”  He frowned thoughtfully.  “And I don’t think that’s what you’re trying to say, is it?”  He raised his eyes to his ship’s console.  “Let’s see if we can get the TARDIS to help translate for you, shall we?”  He caressed the edge of the console, pleading with the ship to understand and help them.  The warning lights slowly died down and the ship hummed inquiringly at him.   _Clara, our Clara, is in there.  Please, I need you to help me save her,_ he projected.  How he would save her from this, he had no idea yet, but there had to be something, because he was _not_ willing to lose her.

Terrified of what he would find, he reached out with trembling hands and tried to disengage the Dalek’s shell.  Nothing happened.  He closed his eyes in weary frustration.  “I’m afraid it’s going to take some very delicate and forceful work to get this open,” he announced, already envisioning the tools he would need.  He tried very hard _not_ to envision the horror he would have to look upon when he exposed what was left of his Clara inside. 

“Here, come here” he gently guided the Dalek nearer to the console.  Eyeing the ship’s core warily, he cautiously lifted a coupling extension from the console.  The TARDIS allowed it without any rumblings or showering sparks, so he took it as a sign of good faith to continue.  “Your arm, here,” he instructed, gentle hands helping her link directly to the TARDIS. 

The Dalek’s speakers began to whir and chirp softly as the TARDIS attempted to tie into its foreign system. 

For several quiet moments he stood beside her, leaning heavily on the console, head bowed.

A little burst of static, and then “Doctor, Doctor, can you hear me?” Clara’s own voice asked desperately. 

He gasped, hands clenching white, his hearts contracting painfully at her voice.

“Oh, thank God, I can hear me, I’m actually saying what I’m trying to say now!” she babbled.  “Doctor, it’s me, I’m inside the Dalek, it’s me, it’s Clara.  I’m in here, I’m alright!”

He looked up at her, trying very hard to smile and finding only a sad approximation.  “Yes, I know, I know it’s you.”  He couldn’t help reaching out and brushing his fingers over the Dalek’s casing again, as if he were stroking her hair. 

“Doctor, it’s alright,” Clara encouraged.  “I’m alright inside here, I just need you to help me get out,” she said cheerily.

He closed his eyes, infinitely wearied by sorrow, vividly recalling the first time this had happened.  “Clara, you’re not—you’re not alright.  That’s your mind trying to maintain its sanity by denying what’s happened to it,” he explained softly. 

“No, no, Doctor, listen, I’m not actually a Dalek, it’s still me in here,” she insisted. 

“Clara, it’s not real!”  He said desperately. If he could get her to accept the reality, maybe there was a chance to save her sanity. “You’re not in your own human body, look, look at yourself,” he ordered, thrusting the scanner screen in front of her.  “You’re—“

“NO, YOU LISTEN TO ME!”  She shouted. 

Eyes wide and chest heaving, he shut his mouth and stared intently at her.

“My whole human body is literally inside here, Doctor.  I climbed in here myself.  It was Missy’s plan to smuggle me into the city.”

“No, no, that can’t—how?” he demanded, afraid to believe her.  It could just as easily be the story invented by her wounded mind.  He yanked down a screen and scanned her again, but it couldn’t penetrate the outer Dalek casing.  _Doubt, question, be_ sure.  “How could you have been running the casing, then?” he challenged. 

“I’ve got electrodes stuck to the sides of my head, daft man.  My foot itches, and I can’t reach it, and I really need to pee,” she added for good measure.  “Me.  In my body.  Inside a metal can.  Now stop panickin’, calm down, and figure out how to get me out,” she ordered.

He stared at her, disbelieving, then sprang for his tools, because if there was any chance, any chance at all that she was right, then he wasn’t wasting a single second more in getting her safely back. 

“Clara, I am going to get you out.  And I hope, oh I hope you’re right.  But if you’re not.”  He closed his eyes.

“Doctor?” she asked, concerned.

He looked intently into the Dalek’s eye.  “If you’re wrong.  I need you to know that I won’t give up on you, Clara.  Not ever.”

“Doctor, are you tryin’ to tell me you’d still love me as a Dalek?” she teased.

He stared back at her soberly, unflinching.

“Oh my God, you are,” Clara breathed.  “Doctor, stop it.  I told you, stop panickin’.” 

He didn’t reply, just knelt in front of her and began the very touchy work of infiltrating a Dalek’s unbreakable casing.  She tried to joke, and he shushed her softly, needing all of his focus on this task if he was to accomplish it without damaging her or triggering a self-protective mechanism that could very well kill him.  His progress was maddeningly slow.  He needed to know, he needed to know absolutely as soon as possible whether Clara was right, if she was really still herself, if he would get her back.  _Please, let him get her back_.  He’d made the mistake of beginning to hope, and he didn’t think he would survive having that hope crushed again.

“Are you _sure_ you can’t open it from the inside?” he asked.  “Have you tried thinking ‘open’ at it?  That should have worked.”

“Only a few hundred times, Doctor,” she sighed through the speaker. 

“Well, keep thinking it,” he muttered.

“It looks like some of the control mechanisms were corroded when the last Dalek was killed in here,” she said.

He flinched.

“Sorry, poor choice of words,” she amended.  “Still not a Dalek,” she promised brightly.

At that moment the casing gave up a click and a decompressing hiss.  Hardly breathing, the Doctor very carefully removed his tools from the open circuit panel. 

“Doctor, is that it?  Did you get it?”  Clara asked eagerly. 

He couldn’t find it in himself to speak.  A slight crack had appeared and gradually widened along the front of the casing.  The Doctor ran his fingers along the crack, pulling very gently at the edges.  The casing started to move, stuck for a moment, and then with a groaning squeal, rattled opened.

The first thing he could see was her lovely little feet.  Then her legs, and her body, and finally her beautiful, teary, smiling face.  “Oh,” he whispered, reaching up and cupping her face in his hands.  She grasped both of his wrists tightly, sniffling. 

“Well then?” she asked expectantly. 

He had the sudden and intense impression that he could no longer breathe so long as she sat inside that casing.  Urgently, carefully he removed the electrodes and lifted her out, into his arms.  She buried her face in his chest, threaded her arms around him, and clung to him as tightly as he held her.

“Oh, Clara,” he said tenderly, stroking her hair for real this time.  “Oh, my Clara.”  He could feel her tears soaking into his shirt.  “You’re alive, you’re here and human, you’re safe,” he murmured the reassurances. 

She finally pulled back enough to look up at him.  “Are you alright?” she asked.

“I thought you were dead.  Or a Dalek.  And you’re not.  I’m more than alright.”  He beamed down at her, aching with the joy of it.

She flashed him a grin, then sobered.  “You were shot, Doctor, by a _Dalek._ ”  Her fingers worried at the edge of the scorched hole in the back of his shirt.  “I knew you wouldn’t stop to take care of yourself until you’d got me out, but now—are you alright?  Your hearts stopped.  You could barely walk after.  I don’t understand how it didn’t kill you on the spot.”

“Regeneration energy,” he answered. 

She paled.  “You’re not—“

“No, no, I’m not regenerating.  Davros tried to use my regeneration energy, pulled it all to the surface.  It absorbed some of the force from the blast.”

She turned him carefully, examining his blistered back.  “It’s already healing,” she said, relieved, running her fingers around the edge of the burn.  She ran her hands back ‘round him, resting one over each heart.  Tears pooled in her eyes.  “You thought I was going to kill you,” she said softly, staring at her hands over his hearts.  “’Course, I thought you were going to kill me too,” she added quietly.

“I nearly did,” he choked guiltily.  “I nearly murdered you in heartbreak and anger.”

She shook her head.  “No, in the end you chose to trust in the mercy of the Dalek you thought had killed me.  You put your life in my hands.  That’s not the choice of a murderer, Doctor.  That’s the choice of a good man, hoping endlessly to find that goodness in everyone else.”

He pulled her close again and pressed a kiss to her hair.  “You never stop saving me, do you?” he said softly. 

“It’s what you do, Doctor.  Someone ought to be looking after you, while you’re savin’ everyone else,” she answered warmly.

He held her for a long moment.  “There’s something I need to do,” he finally told her gravely, reluctantly pulling away.  He set the TARDIS’s controls, and sent them back. 

He picked up the Dalek exterminator and strode to the door.  He paused there, rested his head against the wood, gathering his courage. 

“Doctor, where are we?” Clara asked uncertainly.

He looked up at her.  “Skaro.  Wait here for me, please?”

She nodded, brow furrowed in concern. 

Taking a deep breath, he stepped out.  There he was, silhouetted in the blowing smoke.  His stomach still lurched sickeningly at the sight of the child Davros.    

He heard Clara gasp in the open doorway behind him.

“Who are you?  I don’t get it.  How did you get there?” the frightened boy asked.

“From the future,” he answered gravely.

“Are you going to save me?”

“I’m going to save both of us, the only way I can.”  He raised the gun.  “Exterminate!” 

The boy flinched and turned his head.

With utmost precision, the Doctor fired on the mines, vaporizing them one by one in rapid succession. 

The boy looked around himself in disbelief.  Blue eyes met his.

“Come on.  I’ll take you home.”

“Which side are you on?  Are you the enemy?” the boy asked, still suspicious.

“I’m not sure that any of that matters, friends, enemies.  So long as there’s mercy.  Always mercy.” 

The Doctor stretched out a trembling hand, and saved the child who would become his greatest enemy.


End file.
